About World Globes

“Martin Waldseemüller was a German cartogrpher best known for his Universalis Cosmographia, a 12-sheet woodblock map dated 1507.  Not only was it one of the first maps to precisely chart latitude and longitude, but it also marked the first time the name “America” was used, referring to South America and honoring Amerigo Vespucci.”¹   In 1525 Waldseemüller appears to have had second thoughts about the name, in his reworking of the Ptolemy atlas, the continent is labelled simply Terra Incognita (unkown land).  But despite the revision, 1,000 copies of the world map had been distributed and the original suggestion took hold.  Four copies of the globular map survive in the form of “gores”: printed maps that were intended to be cut out and pasted onto a ball. Only one of these lies in the Americas today, residing at the James Ford Bell Library, University of Minnesota.

¹ Replogle Globes “Age of Exploration“